Wednesday, December 19, 2001
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Wednesday, December 19, 2001 |
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It's the simple things that mean the most By REV JOHN HATCHER It was Christmastime. Mama and Daddy had taken me with them to Milledgeville to pick up my sister, Martha, who was in training to be a registered nurse. She was coming home for Christmas and to return to regular nursing training at the old Columbus, Ga. City Hospital. I must have been in the fifth grade. It's a long drive to Milledgeville and we were after dark getting back home. As Daddy turned into our drive on Benning Road in Columbus, I could not help but to see through the front window a lighted Christmas Tree. For my 10 years of life, we had always had Christmas Trees, but never one with lights. Those lights, that night and the feeling I experienced in just seeing the lights all were forever burned onto my memory as a warm, wonderful, and joyful times in my life. My sisters, Brenda and Nancy, had walked that morning about two miles to a five and dime to purchase a strand of series lights. We all spent the rest of Christmas checking individual lights to find out which one burned out in order to replace it in order to get the lights ablaze again. It was a wonderful Christmas. I really don't think my sisters know how much of a loving impact that strand of lights made on me. But it rings true. It's the simple things that mean the most. From that point on, we always had lights. But that first lighted Christmas Tree will always mean the most. I believe it was that same Christmas or one either side of it that I had enough spending cash to buy an expensive gift for my Mama. It was a 50-cent milk glass plant holder. To Mama, you would have thought I had given her a vase from the Ming dynasty. She privately told me that it was her favorite Christmas gift that year. I will always remember that milk glass plant holder. Mama kept it for years and years. Then, there was the Christmas when my sister Sue was crowned Miss Perry School of Business and she made me feel like I was crowned king. There were those Christmases when my sister Martha would always have a check in the Christmas card. This will be the first Christmas I will not receive a Christmas card from my mother's first daughter. Alice grew weary of me introducing her as my oldest sister. She graduated from this life earlier this year. But as I remember Christmases, I remember Alice always came bearing gifts for her four half-sisters and her one half-brother (my mother was married once before marrying my father). Even when times were tough, she came bearing gifts. I remember the Christmas she gave me two of the cheapest undershirts I had ever had. They were the kind that upon first wash no longer had integrity around the collar or sleeves. Cheap. But it was just that which makes me even now tear up. She and her husband, John, didn't have enough money to buy their daughter any gifts much less extended family. But that cheap gift will forever stand as a testimony in my heart and mind of her great love for me. The day before she died last January, I was reading some Scriptures to her. She said, "You are my preacher and my brother, but first my brother." That's right, sister! Brother first! And at this Christmas, we remember the little things and our mamas, daddies, sisters, and brothers. Thank you, Nancy, Brenda, Sue, and Martha for all the Christmases past! Without you and Mama, Daddy, and Alice, they would not have been the same.
The Rev. Dr. John Hatcher is pastor of River's Edge Community Church in Fayetteville. |
